I said:

‘I’m not waiting here so long at all. I’m waiting fifteen minutes till

they forget a glove and a book and go back and get them.’ Then I told

him who they were that I had come for.

He was very obliging, and began to shout inquiries to the tiers of heads

and shoulders projecting from the windows above us. Then a woman away up

there sang out:

‘Oh, they? Why, I got them a cab and they left here long ago—half-past

eight, I should say.’

It was annoying. I glanced at my watch, but didn’t say anything. The

officer said:

‘It is a quarter of twelve, you see. You should have inquired better.

You have been asleep three-quarters of an hour, and in such a sun as

this! You are baked—baked black. It is wonderful. And you will miss your

train, perhaps. You interest me greatly. What is your occupation?’

I said I was a courier. It seemed to stun him, and before he could come

to we were gone.

When I arrived in the third story of the hotel I found our quarters

vacant. I was not surprised. The moment a courier takes his eye off his

tribe they go shopping. The nearer it is to train time the surer they

are to go. I sat down to try and think out what I had best do next, but

presently the hall boy found me there, and said the Expedition had gone

to the station half an hour before. It was the first time I had known

them to do a rational thing, and it was very confusing. This is one of

the things that make a courier’s life so difficult and uncertain. Just

as matters are going the smoothest, his people will strike a lucid

interval, and down go all his arrangements to wreck and ruin.

The train was to leave at twelve noon sharp. It was now ten minutes

after twelve. I could be at the station in ten minutes. I saw I had no

great amount of leeway, for this was the lightning express, and on the

Continent the lightning expresses are pretty fastidious about getting

away some time during the advertised day. My people were the only ones

remaining in the waiting room; everybody else had passed through and

‘mounted the train,’ as they say in those regions. They were exhausted

with nervousness and fret, but I comforted them and heartened them up,

and we made our rush.

But no; we were out of luck again. The doorkeeper was not satisfied with

the tickets. He examined them cautiously, deliberately, suspiciously:

then glared at me awhile, and after that he called another official. The

two examined the tickets and called another official. These called

others, and the convention discussed and discussed, and gesticulated and

carried on until I begged that they would consider how time was flying,

and just pass a few resolutions and let us go. Then they said very

courteously that there was a defect in the tickets, and asked me where I

got them.

I judged I saw what the trouble was, now. You see, I had bought the

tickets in a cigar shop, and of course the tobacco smell was on them:

without doubt the thing they were up to was to work the tickets through

the Custom House and to collect duty on that smell. So I resolved to be

perfectly frank: it is sometimes the best way. I said:

‘Gentlemen, I will not deceive you. These railway tickets——’

‘Ah! pardon, monsieur! These are not railway tickets.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘is that the defect?’

‘Ah, truly yes, monsieur. These are lottery tickets, yes; and it is a

lottery which has been drawn two years ago.’

I affected to be greatly amused; it is all one can do in such

circumstances; it is all one can do, and yet there is no value in it; it

deceives nobody, and you can see that everybody around pities you and is

ashamed of you. One of the hardest situations in life, I think, is to be

full of grief and a sense of defeat and shabbiness that way, and yet

have to put on an outside of archness and gaiety, while all the time you

know that your own expedition, the treasures of your heart, and whose

love and reverence you are by the custom of our civilisation entitled

to, are being consumed with humiliation before strangers to see you

earning and getting a compassion, which is a stigma, a brand—a brand

which certifies you to be—oh, anything and everything which is fatal to

human respect.

I said, cheerily, it was all right, just one of those little accidents

that was likely to happen to anybody—I would have the right tickets in

two minutes, and we would catch the train yet, and, moreover, have

something to laugh about all through the journey. I did get the tickets

in time, all stamped and complete; but then it turned out that I

couldn’t take them, because, in taking so much pains about the two

missing members, I had skipped the bank and hadn’t the money. So then

the train left, and there didn’t seem to be anything to do but go back

to the hotel, which we did; but it was kind of melancholy and not much

said. I tried to start a few subjects, like scenery and

transubstantiation, and those sorts of things, but they didn’t seem to

hit the weather right.

We had lost our good rooms, but we got some others which were pretty

scattering, but would answer. I judged things would brighten now, but

the Head of the Expedition said, ‘Send up the trunks.’ It made me feel

pretty cold. There was a doubtful something about that trunk business. I

was almost sure of it. I was going to suggest——

But a wave of the hand sufficiently restrained me, and I was informed

that we would now camp for three days and see if we could rest up.

I said all right, never mind ringing; I would go down and attend to the

trunks myself. I got a cab and went straight to Mr. Charles Natural’s

place, and asked what order it was I had left there.

‘To send seven trunks to the hotel.’

‘And were you to bring any back?’

‘No.’

‘You are sure I didn’t tell you to bring back seven that would be found

piled in the lobby?’

‘Absolutely sure you didn’t.’

‘Then the whole fourteen are gone to Zurich or Jericho or somewhere, and

there is going to be more débris around that hotel when the

Expedition——’

I didn’t finish, because my mind was getting to be in a good deal of a

whirl, and when you are that way you think you have finished a sentence

when you haven’t, and you go mooning and dreaming away, and the first

thing you know you get run over by a dray or a cow or something.

I left the cab there—I forgot it—and on my way back I thought it all out

and concluded to resign, because otherwise I should be nearly sure to be

discharged. But I didn’t believe it would be a good idea to resign in

person; I could do it by message. So I sent for Mr. Ludi and explained

that there was a courier going to resign on account of incompatibility

or fatigue or something, and as he had four or five vacant days, I would

like to insert him into that vacancy if he thought he could fill it.

When everything was arranged I got him to go up and say to the

Expedition that, owing to an error made by Mr. Natural’s people, we were

out of trunks here, but would have plenty in Zurich, and we’d better

take the first train, freight, gravel, or construction, and move right

along.

He attended to that and came down with an invitation for me to go

up—yes, certainly; and, while we walked along over to the bank to get

money, and collect my cigars and tobacco, and to the cigar shop to trade

back the lottery tickets and get my umbrella, and to Mr. Natural’s to

pay that cab and send it away, and to the county jail to get my rubbers

and leave p. p. c. cards for the Mayor and Supreme Court, he described

the weather to me that was prevailing on the upper levels there with the

Expedition, and I saw that I was doing very well where I was.

I stayed out in the woods till 4 P.M., to let the weather moderate, and

then turned up at the station just in time to take the three o’clock

express for Zurich along with the Expedition, now in the hands of Ludi,

who conducted its complex affairs with little apparent effort or

inconvenience.

Well, I had worked like a slave while I was in office, and done the very

best I knew how; yet all that these people dwelt upon or seemed to care

to remember was the defects of my administration, not its creditable

features. They would skip over a thousand creditable features to remark

upon and reiterate and fuss about just one fact, till it seemed to me

they would wear it out; and not much of a fact, either, taken by

itself—the fact that I elected myself courier in Geneva, and put in work

enough to carry a circus to Jerusalem, and yet never even got my gang

out of the town. I finally said I didn’t wish to hear any more about the

subject, it made me tired. And I told them to their faces that I would

never be a courier again to save anybody’s life. And if I live long

enough I’ll prove it. I think it’s a difficult, brain-racking,

overworked, and thoroughly ungrateful office, and the main bulk of its

wages is a sore heart and a bruised spirit.

_THE GERMAN CHICAGO_

I feel lost, in Berlin. It has no resemblance to the city I had supposed

it was. There was once a Berlin, which I would have known, from

descriptions in books—the Berlin of the last century and the beginning

of the present one: a dingy city in a marsh, with rough streets, muddy

and lantern-lighted, dividing straight rows of ugly houses all alike,

compacted into blocks as square and plain and uniform and monotonous and

serious as so many dry-goods boxes. But that Berlin has disappeared. It

seems to have disappeared totally, and left no sign. The bulk of the

Berlin of to-day has about it no suggestion of a former period. The site

it stands on has traditions and a history, but the city itself has no

traditions and no history. It is a new city, the newest I have ever

seen. Chicago would seem venerable beside it; for there are many

old-looking districts in Chicago, but not many in Berlin. The main mass

of the city looks as if it had been built last week; the rest of it has

a just perceptibly graver tone, and looks as if it might be six or even

eight months old.

The next feature that strikes one is the spaciousness, the roominess of

the city. There is no other city, in any country, whose streets are so

generally wide. Berlin is not merely _a_ city of wide streets, it is

_the_ city of wide streets. As a wide-street city it has never had its

equal, in any age of the world. ‘Unter den Linden’ is three streets in

one; the Potsdamerstrasse is bordered on both sides by sidewalks which

are themselves wider than some of the historic thoroughfares of the old

European capitals; there seem to be no lanes or alleys; there are no

short-cuts; here and there, where several important streets empty into a

common centre, that centre’s circumference is of a magnitude calculated

to bring that word spaciousness into your mind again. The park in the

middle of the city is so huge that it calls up that expression once

more.

The next feature that strikes one is the straightness of the streets.

The short ones haven’t so much as a waver in them; the long ones stretch

out to prodigious distances and then tilt a little to the right or left,

then stretch out on another immense reach as straight as a ray of light.

A result of this arrangement is, that at night Berlin is an inspiring

sight to see. Gas and the electric light are employed with a wasteful

liberality, and so, wherever one goes, he has always double ranks of

brilliant lights stretching far down into the night on every hand, with

here and there a wide and splendid constellation of them spread out over

an intervening ‘Platz’; and between the interminable double procession

of street lamps one has the swarming and darting cab lamps, a lively and

pretty addition to the fine spectacle, for they counterfeit the rush and

confusion and sparkle of an invasion of fire-flies.

There is one other noticeable feature—the absolutely level surface of

the site of Berlin. Berlin—to capitulate—is newer to the eye than is any

other city, and also blonder of complexion and tidier; no other city has

such an air of roominess, freedom from crowding; no other city has so

many straight streets; and with Chicago it contests the chromo for

flatness of surface and for phenomenal swiftness of growth. Berlin is

the European Chicago. The two cities have about the same population—say

a million and a half. I cannot speak in exact terms, because I only know

what Chicago’s population was week before last; but at that time it was

about a million and a half. Fifteen years ago Berlin and Chicago were

large cities, of course, but neither of them was the giant it now is.

But now the parallels fail. Only parts of Chicago are stately and

beautiful, whereas all of Berlin is stately and substantial, and it is

not merely in parts but uniformly beautiful. There are buildings in

Chicago that are architecturally finer than any in Berlin, I think, but

what I have just said above is still true. These two flat cities would

lead the world for phenomenal good health if London were out of the way.

As it is, London leads, by a point or two. Berlin’s death rate is only

nineteen in the thousand. Fourteen years ago the rate was a third

higher.

Berlin is a surprise in a great many ways—in a multitude of ways, to

speak strongly and be exact. It seems to be the most governed city in

the world, but one must admit that it also seems to be the best

governed. Method and system are observable on every hand—in great

things, in little things, in all details, of whatsoever size. And it is

not method and system on paper, and there an end—it is method and system

in practice. It has a rule for everything, and puts the rule in force;

puts it in force against the poor and powerful alike, without favour or

prejudice. It deals with great matters and minute particulars with equal

faithfulness, and with a plodding and painstaking diligence and

persistency which compel admiration—and sometimes regret. There are

several taxes, and they are collected quarterly. Collected is the word;

they are not merely levied, they are collected—every time. This makes

light taxes. It is in cities and countries where a considerable part of

the community shirk payment that taxes have to be lifted to a burdensome

rate. Here the police keep coming, calmly and patiently, until you pay

your tax. They charge you five or ten cents per visit after the first

call. By experiment you will find that they will presently collect that

money.

In one respect the million and a half of Berlin’s population are like a

family; the head of this large family knows the names of its several

members, and where the said members are located, and when and where they

were born, and what they do for a living, and what their religious brand

is. Whoever comes to Berlin must furnish these particulars to the police

immediately; moreover, if he knows how long he is going to stay, he must

say so. If he take a house he will be taxed on the rent and taxed also

on his income. He will not be asked what his income is, and so he may

save some lies for home consumption. The police will estimate his income

from the house-rent he pays, and tax him on that basis.

Duties on imported articles are collected with inflexible fidelity, be

the sum large or little; but the methods are gentle, prompt, and full of

the spirit of accommodation. The postman attends to the whole matter for

you, in cases where the article comes by mail, and you have no trouble,

and suffer no inconvenience. The other day a friend of mine was informed

that there was a package in the post-office for him, containing a lady’s

silk belt with gold clasp, and a gold chain to hang a bunch of keys on.

In his first agitation he was going to try to bribe the postman to chalk

it through, but acted upon his sober second thought, and allowed the

matter to take its proper and regular course. In a little while the

postman brought the package and made these several collections: duty on

the silk belt, 7½ cents; duty on the gold chain, 10 cents; charge for

fetching the package, 5 cents. These devastating imposts are exacted for

the protection of German home industries.

The calm, quiet, courteous, cussed persistence of the police is the most

admirable thing I have encountered on this side. They undertook to

persuade me to send and get a passport for a Swiss maid whom we had

brought with us, and at the end of six weeks of patient, tranquil,

angelic daily effort they succeeded. I was not intending to give them

trouble, but I was lazy, and I thought they would get tired. Meanwhile

they probably thought I would be the one. It turned out just so.

One is not allowed to build unstable, unsafe, or unsightly houses in

Berlin; the result is this comely and conspicuously stately city, with

its security from conflagrations and break-downs. It is built of

architectural Gibraltars. The Building Commissioners inspect while the

building is going up. It has been found that this is better than to wait

till it falls down. These people are full of whims.

One is not allowed to cram poor folk into cramped and dirty tenement

houses. Each individual must have just so many cubic feet of room-space,

and sanitary inspections are systematic and frequent.

Everything is orderly. The fire brigade march in rank, curiously

uniformed, and so grave is their demeanour that they look like a

Salvation Army under conviction of sin. People tell me that when a fire

alarm is sounded, the firemen assemble calmly, answer to their names

when the roll is called, then proceed to the fire. There they are ranked

up, military fashion, and told off in detachments by the chief, who

parcels out to the detachments the several parts of the work which they

are to undertake in putting out that fire. This is all done with

low-voiced propriety, and strangers think these people are working a

funeral. As a rule the fire is confined to a single floor in these great

masses of bricks and masonry, and consequently there is little or no

interest attaching to a fire here for the rest of the occupants of the

house.

There are abundance of newspapers in Berlin, and there was also a

newsboy, but he died. At intervals of half a mile on the thoroughfares

there are booths, and it is at these that you buy your papers. There are

plenty of theatres, but they do not advertise in a loud way. There are

no big posters of any kind, and the display of vast type and of pictures

of actors and performance, framed on a big scale and done in rainbow

colours, is a thing unknown. If the big show-bills existed there would

be no place to exhibit them; for there are no poster-fences, and one

would not be allowed to disfigure dead walls with them. Unsightly things

are forbidden here; Berlin is a rest to the eye.

And yet the saunterer can easily find out what is going on at the

theatres. All over the city, at short distances apart, there are neat

round pillars eighteen feet high and about as thick as a hogshead, and

on these the little black-and-white theatre bills and other notices are

posted. One generally finds a group around each pillar reading these

things. There are plenty of things in Berlin worth importing to America.

It is these that I have particularly wished to make a note of. When

Buffalo Bill was here his biggest poster was probably not larger than

the top of an ordinary trunk.

There is a multiplicity of clean and comfortable horse-cars, but

whenever you think you know where a car is going to, you would better

stop ashore, because that car is not going to that place at all. The

car-routes are marvellously intricate, and often the drivers get lost

and are not heard of for years. The signs on the cars furnish no details

as to the course of the journey; they name the end of it, and then

experiment around to see how much territory they can cover before they

get there. The conductor will collect your fare over again, every few

miles, and give you a ticket which he hasn’t apparently kept any record

of, and you keep it till an inspector comes aboard by-and-by and tears a

corner off it (which he does not keep), then you throw the ticket away

and get ready to buy another. Brains are of no value when you are trying

to navigate Berlin in a horse-car. When the ablest of Brooklyn’s editors

was here on a visit he took a horse-car in the early morning and wore it

out trying to go to a point in the centre of the city. He was on board

all day and spent many dollars in fares, and then did not arrive at the

place which he had started to go to. This is the most thorough way to

see Berlin, but it is also the most expensive.

But there are excellent features about the car system, nevertheless. The

car will not stop for you to get on or off, except at certain places a

block or two apart, where there is a sign to indicate that that is a

halting station. This system saves many bones. There are twenty places

inside the car; when these seats are filled, no more can enter. Four or

five persons may stand on each platform—the law decrees the number—and

when these standing places are all occupied the next applicant is

refused. As there is no crowding, and as no rowdyism is allowed, women

stand on the platforms as well as men; they often stand there when there

are vacant seats inside, for these places are comfortable, there being

little or no jolting. A native tells me that when the first car was put

on, thirty or forty years ago, the public had such a terror of it that

they didn’t feel safe inside of it, or outside either. They made the

company keep a man at every crossing with a red flag in his hand. Nobody

would travel in the car except convicts on the way to the gallows. This

made business in only one direction, and the car had to go back light.

To save the company, the city government transferred the convict

cemetery to the other end of the line. This made traffic in both

directions, and kept the company from going under. This sounds like some

of the information which travelling foreigners are furnished with in

America. To my mind it has a doubtful ring about it.

The first-class cab is neat and trim, and has leather-cushion seats and

a swift horse. The second-class cab is an ugly and lubberly vehicle, and

is always old. It seems a strange thing that they have never built any

new ones. Still, if such a thing were done everybody that had time to

flock would flock to see it, and that would make a crowd, and the police

do not like crowds and disorder here. If there were an earthquake in

Berlin the police would take charge of it, and conduct it in that sort

of orderly way that would make you think it was a prayer meeting. That

is what an earthquake generally ends in, but this one would be different

from those others; it would be kind of soft and self-contained, like a

republican praying for a mugwump.

For a course (a quarter of an hour or less), one pays twenty-five cents

in a first-class cab, and fifteen cents in a second-class. The

first-class will take you along faster, for the second-class horse is

old—always old—as old as his cab, some authorities say—and ill-fed and

weak. He has been a first-class once, but has been degraded to

second-class for long and faithful service.

Still, he must take you as _far_ for fifteen cents as the other horse

takes you for twenty-five. If he can’t do his fifteen-minute distance in

fifteen minutes, he must still do the distance for the fifteen cents.

Any stranger can check the distance off—by means of the most curious map

I am acquainted with. It is issued by the city government and can be

bought in any shop for a trifle. In it every street is sectioned off,

like a string of long beads of different colours. Each long bead

represents a minute’s travel, and when you have covered fifteen of the

beads you have got your money’s worth. This map of Berlin is a

gay-coloured maze, and looks like pictures of the circulation of the

blood.

The streets are very clean. They are kept so—not by prayer and talk, and

the other New York methods, but by daily and hourly work with scrapers

and brooms; and when an asphalted street has been tidily scraped after a

rain or a light snowfall, they scatter clean sand over it. This saves

some of the horses from falling down. In fact, this is a city government

which seems to stop at no expense where the public convenience, comfort,

and health are concerned—except in one detail. That is the naming of the

streets and the numbering of the houses. Sometimes the name of a street

will change in the middle of a block. You will not find it out till you

get to the next corner and discover the new name on the wall, and of

course you don’t know just when the change happened.

The names are plainly marked on the corners—on all the corners—there are

no exceptions. But the numbering of the houses—there has never been

anything like it since original chaos. It is not possible that it was

done by this wise city government. At first one thinks it was done by an

idiot; but there is too much variety about it for that; an idiot could

not think of so many different ways of making confusion and propagating

blasphemy. The numbers run up one side the street and down the other.

That is endurable, but the rest isn’t. They often use one number for

three or four houses—and sometimes they put the number on only one of

the houses, and let you guess at the others. Sometimes they put a number

on a house—4, for instance—then put 4_a_, 4_b_, 4_c_, on the succeeding

houses, and one becomes old and decrepit before he finally arrives at 5.

A result of this systemless system is, that when you are at No. 1 in a

street, you haven’t any idea how far it may be to No. 150; it may be

only six or eight blocks, it may be a couple of miles. Frederick Street

is long, and is one of the great thoroughfares. The other day a man put

up his money behind the assertion that there were more refreshment

places in that street than numbers on the houses—and he won. There were

254 numbers and 257 refreshment places. Yet, as I have said, it is a

long street.

But the worst feature of all this complex business is, that in Berlin

the numbers do not travel in any one direction; no, they travel along

until they get to 50 or 60, perhaps, then suddenly you find yourself up

in the hundreds—140, maybe; the next will be 139—then you perceive by

that sign that the numbers are now travelling towards you from the

opposite direction. They will keep that sort of insanity up as long as

you travel that street; every now and then the numbers will turn and run

the other way. As a rule there is an arrow under the number, to show by

the direction of its flight which way the numbers are proceeding. There

are a good many suicides in Berlin—I have seen six reported in a single

day. There is always a deal of learned and laborious arguing and

ciphering going on as to the cause of this state of things. If they will

set to work and number their houses in a rational way, perhaps they will

find out what was the matter.

More than a month ago Berlin began to prepare to celebrate Professor

Virchow’s seventieth birthday. When the birthday arrived, the middle of

October, it seemed to me that all the world of science arrived with it;

deputation after deputation came, bringing the homage and reverence of

far cities and centres of learning, and during the whole of a long day

the hero of it sat and received such witness of his greatness as has

seldom been vouchsafed to any man in any walk of life in any time

ancient or modern. These demonstrations were continued in one form or

another day after day, and were presently merged in similar

demonstrations to his twin in science and achievement, Professor

Helmholtz, whose seventieth birthday is separated from Virchow’s by only

about three weeks; so nearly as this did these two extraordinary men

come to being born together. Two such births have seldom signalised a

single year in human history.

But perhaps the final and closing demonstration was peculiarly grateful

to them. This was a Commers given in their honour the other night, by a

thousand students. It was held in a huge hall, very long and very lofty,

which had five galleries, far above everybody’s head, which were crowded

with ladies—four or five hundred, I judged.

It was beautifully decorated with clustered flags and various ornamental

devices, and was brilliantly lighted. On the spacious floor of this

place were ranged, in files, innumerable tables, seating twenty-four

persons each, extending from one end of the great hall clear to the

other, and with narrow aisles between the files. In the centre, on one

side, was a high and tastefully decorated platform twenty or thirty feet

long, with a long table on it behind which sat the half dozen chiefs of

the givers of the Commers in the rich mediæval costumes of as many

different college corps. Behind these youths a band of musicians was

concealed. On the floor, directly in front of this platform, were half a

dozen tables which were distinguished from the outlying continent of

tables by being covered instead of left naked. Of these the central

table was reserved for the two heroes of the occasion and twenty

particularly eminent professors of the Berlin University, and the other

covered tables were for the occupancy of a hundred less distinguished

professors.

I was glad to be honoured with a place at the table of the two heroes of

the occasion, although I was not really learned enough to deserve it.

Indeed there was a pleasant strangeness in being in such company; to be

thus associated with twenty-three men who forget more every day than I

ever knew. Yet there was nothing embarrassing about it, because loaded

men and empty ones look about alike, and I knew that to that multitude

there I was a professor. It required but little art to catch the ways

and attitude of those men and imitate them, and I had no difficulty in

looking as much like a professor as anybody there.

We arrived early; so early that only Professors Virchow and Helmholtz

and a dozen guests of the special tables were ahead of us, and three or

four hundred students. But people were arriving in floods, now, and

within fifteen minutes all but the special tables were occupied, and the

great house was crammed, the aisles included. It was said that there

were four thousand men present. It was a most animated scene, there is

no doubt about that; it was a stupendous beehive. At each end of each

table stood a corps student in the uniform of his corps. These quaint

costumes are of brilliant-coloured silks and velvets, with sometimes a

high plumed hat, sometimes a broad Scotch cap, with a great plume wound

about it, sometimes—oftenest—a little shallow silk cap on the tip of the

crown, like an inverted saucer; sometimes the pantaloons are snow-white,

sometimes of other colours; the boots in all cases come up well above

the knee; and in all cases also white gauntlets are worn; the sword is a

rapier with a bowl-shaped guard for the hand, painted in several

colours. Each corps has a uniform of its own, and all are of rich

material, brilliant in colour, and exceedingly picturesque; for they are

survivals of the vanished costumes of the Middle Ages, and they

reproduce for us the time when men were beautiful to look at. The

student who stood guard at our end of the table was of grave countenance

and great frame and grace of form, and he was doubtless an accurate

reproduction, clothes and all, of some ancestor of his of two or three

centuries ago—a reproduction as far as the outside, the animal man,

goes, I mean.

As I say, the place was now crowded. The nearest aisle was packed with

students standing up, and they made a fence which shut off the rest of

the house from view. As far down this fence as you could see, all these

wholesome young faces were turned in one direction, all these intent and

worshipping eyes were centred upon one spot—the place where Virchow and

Helmholtz sat. The boys seemed lost to everything, unconscious of their

own existence; they devoured these two intellectual giants with their

eyes, they feasted upon them, and the worship that was in their hearts

shone in their faces. It seemed to me that I would rather be flooded

with a glory like that, instinct with sincerity, innocent of

self-seeking, than win a hundred battles and break a million hearts.

There was a big mug of beer in front of each of us, and more to come

when wanted. There was also a quarto pamphlet containing the words of

the songs to be sung. After the names of the officers of the feast were

these words in large type:

_Während des Kommerses herrscht allgemeiner Burgfriede._

I was not able to translate this to my satisfaction, but a professor

helped me out. This was his explanation: The students in uniform belong

to different college corps; not all students belong to corps; none join

the corps except those who enjoy fighting. The corps students fight

duels with swords every week, one corps challenging another corps to

furnish a certain number of duellists for the occasion, and it is only

on this battle-field that students of different corps exchange

courtesies. In common life they do not drink with each other or speak.

The above line now translates itself: There is truce during the Commers,

war is laid aside, and fellowship takes its place.

Now the performance began. The concealed band played a piece of martial

music; then there was a pause. The students on the platform rose to

their feet, the middle one gave a toast to the Emperor, then all the

house rose, mugs in hand. At the call ‘One-two-three!’ all glasses were

drained and then brought down with a slam on the tables in unison. The

result was as good an imitation of thunder as I have ever heard. From

now on, during an hour, there was singing, in mighty chorus. During each

interval between songs a number of the special guests—the

professors—arrived. There seemed to be some signal whereby the students

on the platform were made aware that a professor had arrived at the

remote door of entrance; for you would see them suddenly rise to their

feet, strike an erect military attitude, then draw their swords; the

swords of all their brethren standing guard at the innumerable tables

would flash from the scabbards and be held aloft—a handsome spectacle.

Three clear bugle notes would ring out, then all these swords would come

down with a crash, twice repeated, on the tables, and be uplifted and

held aloft again; then in the distance you would see the gay uniforms

and uplifted swords of a guard of honour, clearing the way and

conducting the guest down to his place. The songs were stirring; the

immense outpour from young life and young lungs, the crash of swords and

the thunder of the beer-mugs, gradually worked a body up to what seemed

the last possible summit of excitement. It surely seemed to me that I

had reached that summit, that I had reached my limit, and that there was

no higher lift desirable for me. When apparently the last eminent guest

had long ago taken his place, again those three bugle blasts rang out,

and once more the swords leaped from their scabbards. Who might this

late comer be? Nobody was interested to inquire. Still, indolent eyes

were turned towards the distant entrance; we saw the silken gleam and

the lifted swords of a guard of honour ploughing through the remote

crowds. Then we saw that end of the house rising to its feet; saw it

rise abreast the advancing guard all along, like a wave. This supreme

honour had been offered to no one before. Then there was an excited

whisper at our table—‘MOMMSEN!’ and the whole house rose. Rose and

shouted and stamped and clapped, and banged the beer-mugs. Just simply a

storm. Then the little man with his long hair and Emersonian face edged

his way past us and took his seat. I could have touched him with my

hand—Mommsen!—think of it!

This was one of those immense surprises that can happen only a few times

in one’s life. I was not dreaming of him, he was to me only a giant

myth, a world-shadowing spectre, not a reality. The surprise of it all

can be only comparable to a man’s suddenly coming upon Mont Blanc, with

its awful form towering into the sky, when he didn’t suspect he was in

its neighbourhood. I would have walked a great many miles to get a sight

of him, and here he was, without trouble or tramp or cost of any kind.

Here he was, clothed in a Titanic, deceptive modesty which made him look

like other men. Here he was, carrying the Roman world and all the Cæsars

in his hospitable skull, and doing it as easily as that other luminous

vault, the skull of the universe, carries the Milky Way and the

constellations.

One of the professors said that once upon a time an American young lady

was introduced to Mommsen, and found herself badly scared and

speechless. She dreaded to see his mouth unclose, for she was expecting

him to choose a subject several miles above her comprehension, and

didn’t suppose he _could_ get down to the world that other people lived

in; but when his remark came, her terrors disappeared:

‘Well, how do you do? Have you read Howells’s last book? _I_ think it’s

his best.’

The active ceremonies of the evening closed with the speeches of

welcome, delivered by two students, and the replies made by Professors

Virchow and Helmholtz.

Virchow has long been a member of the city government of Berlin. He

works as hard for the city as does any other Berlin alderman, and gets

the same pay—nothing. I don’t know that we in America could venture to

ask our most illustrious citizen to serve in a board of aldermen, and if

we might venture it I am not positively sure that we could elect him.

But here the municipal system is such that the best men in the city

consider it an honour to serve gratis as aldermen, and the people have

the good sense to prefer these men, and to elect them year after year.

As a result, Berlin is a thoroughly well-governed city. It is a free

city; its affairs are not meddled with by the State; they are managed by

its own citizens, and after methods of their own devising.

_A PETITION TO THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND_

HARTFORD: _Nov. 6, 1887_.

Madam,—You will remember that last May Mr. Edward Bright, the clerk of

the Inland Revenue Office, wrote me about a tax which he said was due

from me to the Government on books of mine published in London—that is

to say, an income tax on the royalties. I do not know Mr. Bright, and it

is embarrassing to me to correspond with strangers; for I was raised in

the country and have always lived there, the early part in Marion

county, Missouri, before the war, and this part in Hartford county,

Connecticut, near Bloomfield, and about eight miles this side of

Farmington, though some call it nine, which it is impossible to be, for

I have walked it many and many a time in considerably under three hours,

and General Hawley says he has done it in two and a quarter, which is

not likely; so it has seemed best that I write your Majesty. It is true

that I do not know your Majesty personally, but I have met the Lord

Mayor, and if the rest of the family are like him, it is but just that

it should be named royal; and likewise plain that in a family matter

like this, I cannot better forward my case than to frankly carry it to

the head of the family itself. I have also met the Prince of Wales once,

in the fall of 1873, but it was not in any familiar way, but in a quite

informal way, being casual, and was, of course, a surprise to us both.

It was in Oxford Street, just where you come out off Oxford into Regent

Circus, and just as he turned up one side of the circle at the head of a

procession, I went down the other side on the top of an omnibus. He will

remember me on account of a grey coat with flap pockets that I wore, as

I was the only person on the omnibus that had on that kind of a coat; I

remember him, of course, as easy as I would a comet. He looked quite

proud and satisfied, but that is not to be wondered at, he has a good

situation. And once I called on your Majesty, but you were out.

But that is no matter, it happens with everybody. However, I have

wandered a little away from what I started about. It was this way. Young

Bright wrote my London publishers, Chatto and Windus—their place is the

one on the left as you come down Piccadilly, about a block and a half

above where the minstrel show is—he wrote them that he wanted them to

pay income tax on the royalties of some foreign authors, namely, ‘Miss

De La Ramé (Ouida), Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mr. Francis Bret Harte,

and Mr. Mark Twain.’ Well, Mr. Chatto diverted him from the others, and

tried to divert him from me, but in this case he failed. So then young

Bright wrote me. And not only that, but he sent me a printed document

the size of a newspaper, for me to sign, all over in different places.

Well, it was that kind of a document that the more you study it the more

it undermines you, and makes everything seem uncertain to you; and so,

while in that condition, and really not responsible for my acts, I wrote

Mr. Chatto to pay the tax, and charge to me. Of course my idea was, that

it was for only one year, and that the tax would be only about one per

cent. or along there somewhere, but last night I met Professor Sloane of

Princeton—you may not know him, but you have probably seen him every now

and then, for he goes to England a good deal; a large man and very

handsome, and absorbed in thought, and if you have noticed such a man on

platforms after the train is gone, that is the one, he generally gets

left, like all those specialists and other scholars who know everything

but how to apply it—and he said it was a back tax for _three_ years, and

not one per cent. but two and a half!

That gave what had seemed a little matter a new aspect. I then began to

study the printed document again, to see if I could find anything in it

that might modify my case, and I had what seems to be a quite promising

success. For instance, it opens thus—polite and courteous, the way those

English Government documents always are—I do not say that to hear myself

talk, it is just the fact, and it is a credit:

‘To MR. MARK TWAIN: IN PURSUANCE of the Acts of Parliament for granting

to Her Majesty Duties and Profits,’ &c.

I had not noticed that before. My idea had been that it was for the

Government, and so I wrote _to_ the Government; but now I saw that it

was a private matter, a family matter, and that the proceeds went to

yourself, not the Government. I would always rather treat with

principals, and I am glad I noticed that clause. With a principal one

can always get at a fair and right understanding, whether it is about

potatoes, or continents, or any of those things, or something entirely

different; for the size or nature of the thing does not affect the fact;

whereas, as a rule, a subordinate is more or less troublesome to

satisfy. And yet this is not against them, but the other way. They have

their duties to do, and must be harnessed to rules, and not allowed any

discretion. Why, if your Majesty should equip young Bright with

discretion—I mean his own discretion—it is an even guess that he would

discretion you out of house and home in two or three years. He would not

_mean_ to get the family into straits, but that would be the upshot,

just the same. Now then, with Bright out of the way, this is not going

to be any Irish question; it is going to be settled pleasantly and

satisfactorily for all of us, and when it is finished your Majesty is

going to stand with the American people just as you have stood for fifty

years, and surely no monarch can require better than that of an alien

nation. They do not all pay a British income tax, but the most of them

will in time, for we have shoals of new authors coming along every year;

and of the population of your Canada, upwards of four-fifths are wealthy

Americans, and more going there all the time.

Well, another thing which I noticed in the document was an item about

‘Deductions.’ I will come to that presently, your Majesty. And another

thing was this: that Authors are not mentioned in the document at all.

No, we have ‘Quarries, Mines, Iron Works, Salt Springs, Alum Mines,

Water Works, Canals, Docks, Drains, Levels, Fishings, Fairs, Tolls,

Bridges, Ferries,’ and so forth and so forth and so on—well, as much as

a yard or a yard and a half of them, I should think—anyway a very large

quantity or number. I read along—down, and down, and down the list,

further, and further, and further, and as I approached the bottom my

hopes began to rise higher and higher, because I saw that everything in

England, _that_ far, was taxed by name and in detail, except, perhaps,

the family, and may be Parliament, and yet still no mention of Authors.

Apparently they were going to be overlooked. And sure enough, they were!

My heart gave a great bound. But I was too soon. There was a footnote,

in Mr. Bright’s hand, which said: ‘You are taxed under Schedule D,

Section 14.’ I turned to that place, and found these three things:

‘Trades, Offices, Gas Works.’

Of course, after a moment’s reflection, hope came up again, and then

certainty: Mr. Bright was in error, and clear off the track; for

Authorship is not a Trade, it is an inspiration; Authorship does not

keep an Office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and

everywhere where the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the

creatures of God are free. Now then, since I have no Trade and keep no

Office, I am not taxable under Schedule D, Section 14. Your Majesty

sees that; so I will go on to that other thing that I spoke of, the

‘Deductions’—deductions from my tax which I may get allowed, under

conditions. Mr. Bright says all deductions to be claimed by me must be

restricted to the provisions made in Paragraph No. 8, entitled ‘Wear

and Tear of Machinery or Plant.’ This is curious, and shows how far he

has gotten away on his wrong course after once he has got started

wrong; for Offices and Trades do not have Plant, they do not have

Machinery, such a thing was never heard of; and, moreover, they do not

wear and tear. You see that, your Majesty, and that it is true. Here

is the Paragraph No. 8:

‘Amount claimed as a deduction for diminished value by reason of Wear

and Tear, where the Machinery or Plant belongs to the Person or Company

carrying on the Concern, or is let to such Person or Company so that the

Lessee is bound to maintain and deliver over the same in good

condition:—

_Amount_ £.......................’

There it is—the very words.